Jim Stengel, outgoing global marketing chief at P&G is promoting purposed-based marketing. What do you do beyond making money that makes your customer’s lives better? He uses the example of the Pampers brand and helping mom’s develop healthy happy babies, beyond keeping them dry. To do that they offered parenting advice and tips and conducted research to improve the brand.

Basically, they provided additional value with relevant information. This reminds me of social responsibility and cause related marketing. Do something good for your customers relevant to your brand. The pharmaceutical manufacturers have caught on in the last decade, and are providing additional information on diseases and self help measures. Anthem health insurance is providing its insured with all types of information to help prevent illnesses. Utilities provide ways to help customers save energy costs. I like the new name, but I really don’t think there is all that much new with purposed-based marketing.

The beer market is depressed and they are counting on your depression to help save them. Usually when the economy is down…beer consumption is up. Sadly though, hops prices are driving margins down and beer drinkers are discovering smaller brands and drinking more imports . All of this is hurting the traditional core brands. Anheuser’s shares are down 9.9% in 2008.  Goldman Sach’s is concerned! They said “we remain concerned about U.S. beer business margin outlook due to escalating commodity costs and the need to drive core brand volumes.”

Our domestic core brands should be worried. While shipments of imported U.S. beers have fallen, sales by volume is still up for Heineken Premium Light. Their volume rose 15.5% through March 23 from the same period last year according to (IRI). Yet, this growth is slower than last year and the company is counting on marketing to help increase growth.  Now get this…, according to The Wall Street Journal they are counting on depressed drinkers to be alturistic. Are they serious? Seems they are. They are launching an ad campaing asking folks to “Be a Beer Samaritan.” That’s right. They think that since the economy is depressed giving beer away will lift your “spirits.”  I gotta see this to believe it. If I am short on money I certainly am not going to give away my beer. No sir. These ads are not meant to be funny. They are even going to distribute coasters that say “Adopt a Stranger.” “Share the Good.” I hope they don’t mean the guy on the street corner.  Do you think you can use the coaster as a receipt to write off the donation on your taxes?

Let’s keep our eye on the beer market. This should prove to be interesting.

Just when you thought you had heard enough bad economic news we get hit with another indication we are in big trouble. The Wallstreet Journal today (April 22) tells us that domestic Barbie sales declined as foreign sales increased.  Poor Barbie is fighting for her reputation once again, and it is not because she was out too late with Ken.  Some hip hop-doll who is named Bratz of all things in stealing market share from Barbie.  I checked out Bratz’s website and Barbie’s. I must admit, Bratz had a better site. I feel so bad for Barbie. Will Barbie be able to keep up? Are they messing too much with her brand? What is to become of our old friend?

Savvy marketers have folks monitoring blogs and conversations. At a recent workshop I attended, I found out that IndyMoms has people that are hired to keep conversations going.  At this same workshop I  met someone who to promote an expo had some four people she had hired to create twelve personas. Each person had different e-mail addresses for the type of “Mom” they represented in discussions that would happen to mention the expo. IndyMoms tries to watch out for such fraudulent discussions but I am sure they cannot uncover them all.

Companies also monitor blogs to find customers complaining about service or product features as well as those on forums trying to solve problems.  This is a smart and legitimate way to keep in touch with customers and to monitor satisfaction.

A student doing a paper on Human Behaviors for a Psychology Marketing class began March 14th at 4:45 p.m. to create a social network to show how influential viral marketing can be in today’s marketplace. As of yesterday, April 12th, there were 765,948 members. The original goal was to reach 200,000 by the time the paper was due on March 31st. The student reached over 200,000 in one week. The student is now trying to reach over 1,000,000 plus people in 30 days. At one point Facebook deactivated the account for too much activity.   The group is called Psychology Marketing Project.